


We

by tb_ll57



Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Background Relationships, Background Slash, Backstory, Gap Filler, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:58:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1278601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He must be a very bad brother, because it doesn’t occur to him to wonder what she’ll think of this until he’s walking the low-roofed catacombs toward Roger’s tomb.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We

The latch stirred Baird, who rose hastily when a weary glance proved it to be Prince Jonathon entering the sickroom.

‘Forgive me,’ Jonathon said quickly, pitched softly in the stillness. ‘Please, your Grace, rest.’

‘I didn’t expect you so late, your Highness.’

‘I was with my parents until just now.’ He didn’t approve the decision his father had made, only minutes earlier, but it was not in his power, and more importantly it was not– yet– his place, to disagree. But it left him with a sour roil in the stomach, and though he was tired, mortally tired, his mind chased unhappy thoughts in a dizzying whirl.

He’d lapsed into silence without realising it. Baird jumped when Jonathon cleared his throat. ‘How is he?’ he asked, gesturing to the bed and its pale, sunken-eyed prisoner.

‘He’ll recover,’ the healer replied heavily. ‘The terrors have not returned, and today he responded to his name.’

‘Thank the gods.’ Even that relief, however, was grim. His mouth curved before he could conceal it, but Baird wouldn’t pass tales, and Thom–

‘Bad enough he brought Roger back,’ Jonathon said. ‘I don’t know how I would have told her if we’d lost her brother in the doing.’

 

**

 

Alanna is the famous twin, here in Corus, and infamous, too. Thom most often laughs at the rumours he hears when he is not supposed to, and sometimes– less often– he is in awe of the stories that his sister’s forlorn friends tell each other during the long boring parties. Loved or hated, though, Alanna is the topic on every tongue, that first exciting winter.

It is exciting– at first. He can barely remember the mountain scenery of the City of the Gods once he’s left it, but he finds the pageantry of Court enthralling, the vast panorama of the bustling marketplace and the elegant Temple District exotic, the Palace a confection fantasy of glazed glass and jewelled glitter. He grows thicker in the waist in just his first month on juicy lowland beef, crispy roasted peacock from the royal garden, hothouse squash awash with fresh cream butter. The wine alone is a dazzling experience, and every night he forgets the wretched headaches that await him in the morning to punish his greedy overindulgence. It’s all worth it.

But Thom has always jaded quickly. There’s no-one here to hide from, since Alanna quite handily did in their smiling friend, and so he abandons the simpleton character he has played for seven years with something a little giddy in him, like the feeling right before throwing himself into Trebond’s freezing lake. (Alanna may have pushed him in, the first time, but if Thom could never match her muscles he didn’t lack for courage of his own, and he is the twin who knows how to swim, at least.) The Court is used to great sorcerers, and despite Roger’s vivid end they haven’t quite learnt yet to be leery, so Thom’s reputation grows with fantastic embellishments after he turns a rosebush into gold for a pretty kitchen maid, coaxes song from the marble columns in the throne room for the amusement of their Majesties, darkens the sky to night and the clouds to thunderstorm in a rage when Tiberus of Malven makes an unwise sneer in his hearing. He attracts a following and just as quickly drives them away with insults and jibes. George hosts him once in the Dancing Dove– he only wanted to see it– but his frozen expression does the talking when Thom, tongue too loose as always, asks not-so-innocently just exactly how the Rogue of Rogues discovered his sister’s femininity.

But he’s never been much of one for regrets. Neither of them are, really, him and Alanna. And though he hasn’t left his bed for hers in millennia, really, sometimes at night now in her city, in her home, he thinks he’s holding her hand at night only to wake alone and missing her sharp, disapproving, loving frowns.

He was always the twin who said ‘we’. It’s not that he’s jealous of her. She’s magnificent, and what she’s achieved is magnificent. But Thom knows, in his soul, that he will be just as great as she is.

He doesn’t let himself think– _greater._

 

**

 

Raoul was the one who noticed Delia’s attention wandering.

Her crowd of admirers was as strong in members as ever, though perhaps they were a little less dedicated as winter waned to spring. There were a thousand reasons, and none of them had to do with the lady herself; which was three-fourths the problem.

The weather stayed chill and dreary longer than in recent years, and the knights who had been cooped up too long became restless and jittery. A late frost delayed the arrival of the newest girls from the convent to Court, and for those who cared about such menial things there was the worry over the planting, alarmingly delayed. New gossip was hard to come by and what little there was was endlessly hashed to death. The Queen was ill again, but no-one would yet say the name that everyone was thinking– and so no-one much remarked on her sickness at all.

It made Delia waspish, and so did the lack of sun, which flattered the honey highlights of her hair and brought the faintest kiss of colour to her pale skin. And so did Prince Jonathon’s moping, which, though the source and subject of a great deal of rumour, did nothing to amuse the gentlewoman who had once been the favourite cause of a thousand doldrums. Her few female friends assured her Jonathon would return to her, but the truth was evident to all. Nor could she satisfy herself with the attention of a lesser man, though some, like Gareth the Younger, might have been expected to rejoice in the freedom to approach her. But he was far too occupied with vapid little Cytheria of Elden. There was his newly knighted squire, who was very well born and that very winter the popular hero of– it was at least an entertaining tale, once the Court bards made narrative sense of the young man’s embarrassed mumblings– a victory against the dreadful pirates who sacked the better half of Port Nolopont; but he spent more time fleeing balls than dancing in them. Delia didn’t start the story about the stable boys who suffered for his particular enthusiasms, but she passed it on several times, glowing a little, at least, from the exercise.

One ardent lover who did not abandon her was Raoul of Goldenlake. He had never been her favourite, as she cared little for hairy men, and Goldenlake was, to her shuddering imagination, the very image of the shaggy mountain bears so often glimpsed in her native Eldorne. But through the inattention of his peers he was granted unprecedented access to her presence. He bought a dozen trinkets to make her smile, played soothing lullabies on the lute when she was cross– he was a fine musician for a man with such large hands– and he never trod on her feet when they danced, thus never obliging her to restrain her temper. He was, she discovered, also the only close friend of that _female_ who hadn’t known the truth.

This, Delia locked away. This, she knew, would be useful. How she hadn’t yet determined, but it was important, and for delivering the secret she let the footman kiss her and entirely forgot to threaten him to silence after.

Raoul was flattered by her sudden interest in him. He talked shyly of his manor, of his father who had been a great poet before he had come to the attention of the Crown for his bravery in battle. He talked of his dissatisfaction with gentle Court life, he talked of his admiration for the King who was fair to a fault, he talked of losing his sister in the Sweating Sickness, which they now knew had been caused by– not even Raoul would say his name– and finally, finally, just when Delia would have torn out her own hair in frustration, he talked about _her._

He hadn’t known, but of all her closest friends, Raoul of Goldenlake, so unassuming he wouldn’t even court a woman until all the others had tried and failed, knew what no-one else had guessed. He had seen the Prince and his squire together.

‘I kept their secret,’ he said, panted into her hair as his body moved over hers, in hers. ‘Why wouldn’t they trust me– why wouldn’t they tell me–‘

 _Roger,_ Delia thought. _If only you had known._

 

**

 

The spell that Si-Cham and Thom write together may never see another usage, but it’s one of the finest pieces Thom has ever crafted. (Aside, of course, from the one that makes it necessary.)

His pride has a bitter taste to it as they explain it to Alanna. She sits aggressively, intently, the tendons in her hand catching Thom’s attention away from Si-Cham’s wheezing voice. The firelight throws shadow and brightness on the tendons in her hand as it clenches, repeatedly, on the hilt of her sword. She wrote him about that sword, once, and one day when they’re not doing something so dreadfully important and ridiculously dull he’ll ask if he can try to make the crystal work. Although she might not let him, given what happened when he tried the same on her emberstone. She never used to be so selfish with her toys. But then it’s been rather a long time since they did anything so innocent as play together, and surely she’d think he really was simple, if he told her right then that he missed that, missed the–

Naivete of it.

Because they’re not just _the twins_ these days. They’ve grown into separate people. Except that having her in reach only reminds Thom of how he’s felt like he was missing half his limbs, since they said good-bye on the Great Road and went off separate ways to meet their destinies. He wants to ask her if she’s proud of him, of what he’s accomplished, except that half of what he does is undoing half of what she’s done, and he can’t bring himself to admit to that aloud, just yet.

‘But whatever’s–‘ She doesn’t want to say that, either, and Thom supplies the word, falling into the conversation without having heard any of it, because they are still twins, at the end of the day, and he’ll always know what she’s thinking.

‘Poisoning,’ he interrupts.

‘Whatever’s poisoning his Gift,’ she finishes, with only the slightest hesitation to let him know the word hurts, ‘it will transfer to me, as well.’

‘That would be true, if we spoke of weeks, or months,’ Si-Cham assures her. He likes Alanna, and there’s already affection in his voice for her. It highlights that there’s none for Thom.

‘You’re only holding it for me,’ Thom says. ‘Like a lamp or bowl or something. It won’t be _in_ you. And I’ll want it back.’

The barest hint of a smile makes a crease in her mouth. She looks older, since the Roof of the World, and it pains him. She would say it pains her to look at him, these days, if she would say such things. She doesn’t.

She’s so different now. He hates it, but it makes him love her more, more, until sometimes it does hurt, until it makes him feel overfull.

He can’t shake the feeling that somehow Roger’s done this. None of them say it. No-one says anything about Roger, and certainly none of them say anything to him. It’s possible it’s only a delayed effect of raising the dead. The histories say nothing. The histories are worthless. Thom is writing history. With only a little help; which, he supposes, is probably how it usually goes.

‘A week,’ she says.

The casting is beautiful, really, considering its purpose, and Thom knows that even Alanna can feel it because there’s at least a moment of suppressed excitement in her face when the slow purge begins. Afterward, she looks like someone’s drawn and quartered her, but of course she’d rather die than complain, and Thom can breathe for the first time in months, which makes him so grateful that he cries, ashamed of himself, especially when Si-Cham leaves as if that’s going to save his dignity when it’s already too late. Alanna comes into his arms and she’s smaller, when did that happen, but she’s still stronger, and he can’t stop himself from kissing her until she laughs again, just so he can hear it sparkle in the air.

He wakes still wrapped around her, hours later. It’s dark in his chambers, and someone is in them.

‘Shh,’ Roger murmurs. ‘Don’t startle her.’

He’s gone tense as a wire, but the shout dies on his lips. She stirs when he squeezes her too tight, and in frantic remorse he uses too much magic. She goes limp, deeply unconscious.

Roger might know, must know, but it passes in silence. The moonlight from the lattice window falls in diamonds on Roger’s dark hair, the midnight velvet of his tunic.

‘She’s softer when she sleeps,’ Roger observes. ‘How unanticipated.’

All he can force out of his mouth is a whisper. The burn of humiliation is too strong, with Roger staring, so blatantly– something. He thought it was amusement, until the light changed. Now he doesn’t know what it is, except that it frightens him, but he doesn’t know which of them he’s frightened for.

 

**

 

Coram returned to Corus that May. He didn’t come alone, but he didn’t come with Alanna, and so no-one thought to alert Thom. The first he heard of it was a summons from his sister’s dearest friend.

Thom, now quite accustomed to sleeping past noon (the library was only empty at night, when the pages and squires would be asleep and he could be guaranteed several hours of quiet), appeared in a wrinkled maroon robe that clashed with his unbrushed hair and mismatched boots. The prince, in contrast, was meticulous in sombre chocolate satin. The only modest accents were a topaz drop in one ear, and the new moustaches he was growing. Thom, who wore a beard only because he could not be bothered to shave every day, approved the choice.

‘I wonder if you would ride with me, Master Lord Thom?’ the Prince asked, as if unaware Thom had just trekked the considerable length of the Palace to the Prince’s royal suite, which was as much exercise as Thom ever got, or wanted.

‘I ride poorly,’ Thom answered, determined to develop a grump. ‘I’m afraid Alanna is the only living Trebond with that love.’

‘A walk, then,’ the Prince countered, smoothly enough that the pause in which he obviously re-evaluated his squire’s relation might be, if one were generous and were not Thom, who was rarely generously inclined, overlooked. ‘The gardens are beginning to bloom, and you haven’t seen them in their full splendour yet.’

And so it was that Thom found himself developing a blister on his right ankle from a boot that fit well enough when he was only sitting at his books. The Prince was in a grave mood, his elegant brow an unattractive frown.

There was certainly enough to frown about. The Queen was in a wretched state. Thom had seen her, had consulted with Duke Baird and even by crystal with the chief healer of the university in Carthak. Thom expected her to die by Midwinter; though, in a singular fit of diplomacy, he refrained from saying so. The King barely stirred from her side. He looked ill himself. Their love affair was legend, but the legend was going to be the death of them both. Tragedy aside, however, the legend’s lone heir was no-where near ready for that burden, and Thom had worldliness enough to know that a poor ruler would mean a very great disruption of his own life, before he’d half begun living it.

It was not that the Prince was a callow youth, or a scandalous wastrel, or even unintelligent. In fact, he had a lively curiosity, and in Thom’s opinion a healthy interest in his own Gift, something his sister had no doubt despised. The Prince had even approached Thom with the very solid idea of creating elaborate wards to protect the royal family from any as-yet-undetected remnants of the Duke of Conte’s many schemes. That, Thom felt, was the healthiest instinct of all. Was it enough?

The proof of the pudding, as always, would be in the eating.

‘Did she ever tell you about Persepolis?’

It was the last thing he had expected, and he was preoccupied in reflecting that only his Highness— and, of course, George Cooper, whom Thom suspected was in great and dangerously requited love with his sister— called Alanna ‘she’ without first stuttering over years of contrary habit.

‘The demon-immortals,’ Thom questioned.

‘The Ysandir.’ The man before him wavered and became Jonathon, for a moment, the squire who must, once, have had every bit of Alanna’s dream of adventure and glory. Before the genetics of responsibility had overwhelmed imagination. ‘I half expected them to be a story,’ Jonathon said. ‘Even though the Bazhir believed it, and Alanna believed it, and he—‘

‘The Duke.’

‘I wonder I never saw it.’ The Prince was back, bitterness curling his lips. ‘I was convinced I loved him. I was convinced he would never risk my life. I even thought he sent me there because he’d had a vision, perhaps, or because he knew I’d been studying in secret—‘

‘He didn’t,’ Thom said. ‘He kept extensive journals on quite a lot of you. For the Veiling. It was a very good spell, you know, very precisely calibrated, you see, and—‘

‘Yes.’

Thom closed his mouth.

‘Forgive me,’ the Prince said, only a little less gracefully than usual. ‘But let me ask again—did she ever tell you?’

‘Pigs might fly first. Getting details from her is like pulling a good tooth. For someone so determined to commit great deeds, my sister is very content they be anonymous.’

‘She’s with the Bazhir again, you know. Coram has just come back with letters, and—‘ Whatever ‘and’ was went unsaid. ‘She’s been adopted into a tribe.’

‘How odd,’ he said, delighted. ‘Though I doubt those poor people have the faintest idea what havoc she’ll wreak. Can you even imagine her in that horrid desert garb? Wrapped in headcloths and hiding in tents while the menfolk hunt whatever you hunt in a desert. Not her. I imagine in a week we’ll hear she’s rousted the evil headman or something like that, and they’ll declare her their princess, and—you know, I do think she won’t be content until she has the entire world at her fingertips—‘ and stopped only because the sudden wash of envy he felt for her was so strong it strangled him.

Another long considering look, then. ‘I can’t decide,’ the Prince answered slowly, ‘if you’re nothing alike, you and her, or exactly the same.’

 

**

 

They came for Myles, first, for reasons Myles would never know.

It was two guardsmen, first, pounding on his door in the dead of night. Then it was Alex, in only his hose and a bed sheet, eyes wild with what memory would think was triumph. By then Myles was sending a page to wake– they needed Baird, they needed Gareth, they needed his Majesty the King. They needed a priest, if only to check that all the Realms hadn’t fallen into the same chaos that suddenly ruled the Palace.

It was a scene from a penny dreadful, from a play in the market, from a nightmare. The open tomb with the marble lid pushed back just enough. The white winding silk discarded to the catacomb floors in empty folds. The frenetic, _terrified_ screaming– Master Lord Thom, wilted to a torture-wracked ball, the bleeding rents in his face dug by his own fingernails, out of his mind from magic no mortal should have attempted. Swords were drawn, stuttered questions without answers shouted, and, still centre of all of it, Roger, Duke of Conte, very much alive.

Baird could do nothing for Thom, who quieted only when his body gave out.

The King’s Council was called before the sun rose. They stayed locked away until it set again.

The Queen fainted when she was told. Gathering much less notice, so did Delia of Eldorne.

An armed host was set. Every man, woman, or child with the Gift was summoned to stand ward.

Roger endured it all with a bemused smile, and asked only for warm fresh milk, as he found he wanted to remember what it tasted like.

Myles got very, very drunk.

Jonathon was there, the next morning, a quiet attendant with gentle hands and Alanna’s fail-proof hangover cure. Myles drank it in two wretched gulps, and lay with his hand over his eyes until the room slowly settled from its wild spin into something like the proper balance.

‘They’ve decided to keep it secret,’ Jonathon told him. He slowly rubbed dust from the old ivory chess set on Myles’ overflowing desk. Myles stared blearily at him.

‘Wise,’ he answered, when he thought he might open his mouth without unfortunate consequences. ‘It will cause a panic.’

‘There’s dozens who know already.’ The Prince sank into the chair nearest the dark hearth. ‘It won’t stay secret long.’

‘What would you have them do?’

‘I don’t know.’

There was sunlight, beneath the heavy drapes Myles muzzily recalled pulling closed the night before. He didn’t recall why, because he’d been quite certain, at the time, that there would never be sunlight again. How could there be, when men could be plucked from death?

There was bread on the tray Jonathon had brought, and it took the rancid taste from his mouth, at least. Jonathon rose at his silent invitation and sat on the edge of the bed to pick at his own portion.

‘He says he was in ‘Sorcerer’s Sleep’,’ the prince said, at last. ‘He’s remarkably open with the details.’

‘Why?’

‘He seems– calm. Too calm.’ Jonathon crumbled crust into dust, and brushed it away with the side of his hand. ‘He says no man can return from between the Realms without leaving some part behind. I think he’d have us believe it was his sanity that he departed from.’

‘Perhaps it’s true,’ Myles replied.

‘Why now?’ Jonathon whispered, and turned sick eyes to his friend. ‘Why now, when nothing feels right anyway? And Mother–‘

Myles had seen remarkable things in his life. He’d fought in wars that had killed beloved companions by the handful, and lived long enough to serve a King who brought peace instead of battle. He’d walked amongst ghosts, demons, and even Gods. He’d taught a hundred young men each as special as the last, and seen nearly all of them into honourable manhood. He’d seen a girl become a knight, and a boy become a prince, and found that all of it, in the end, was part of the endless cycle of the natural world he so admired, a precious gift he was, however flawed a man, privileged and humbled to accept.

He had no words of comfort. He had no philosophy, no sage advice from the Ancient Ones, no ability, even, to imagine what would happen if the sun should somehow manage to rise again tomorrow.

They sat in silence together until Gary came to fetch them both. ‘The King,’ the young man said briefly. And then, ‘Myles, you’d best change first. And Jonathon, you look as if you haven’t slept at all. Now’s no time for this, gentlemen.’

‘Quite right,’ Myles agreed softly. When he stood, the room barely reeled at all. ‘Sir Gareth,’ he added politely, ‘if I should drown in the bath, do be so good as to pull me out.’

 

**

 

When Jonathon comes back from the desert, he calls Thom to him before he’s even finished unpacking.

‘I want to ride,’ he snaps, and now is not the time to refuse, so Thom doesn’t, even though he’s barely sat a horse in years except for one miserable week of travel. The hostlers saddle their horses, and Jonathon wants his Darkness even though the poor animal is barely rested, and the gelding Thom brought from Trebond is old enough to be in pasture. Thom’s bottom is sore by the time the Palace is at their backs and the Great Forest is reaching out leafy arms to envelope them.

‘Your Highness seems troubled,’ he says, and forever after wishes he hadn’t, because Jonathon tells him everything.

He sees black and then he sees red, and then he sees Jonathon under him as he tries furiously to free a fist to hit him with. Already there’s a smear of scarlet where Thom bloodied Jonathon’s nose. It makes him madder. He is mad, he’s gone demented, unhinged, because if he were sane he wouldn’t be attacking the man who will be King soon. But the madness gives him freakish strength, and he gets in two more lucky punches before Jonathon kicks him in the hip and flings him back, and hits him so hard across the face that this time all he sees is stars.

‘Mithros,’ Jonathon pants, somewhere far above him. ‘Thom. Thom, come on. Look at me.’

‘How could you do this to her,’ Thom croaks. His cheek is a blaze of hurt and it’s hard to form the words, his sense knocked loose. ‘How could you ruin her.’

‘She’s the one who wouldn’t have me!’ Jonathon hauls him upright, to shake him, rattling him until his doublet tears. ‘I would have made her Queen. I loved her!’

‘You selfish pig.’ He can’t get loose, but he makes Jonathon wince all the same, the heat of violet Gift pouring from his fingers where he grabs the prince by the wrists. ‘All the rumours about you, if only half of them are true, then you’ve been with half the women at Court. Of course she won’t marry you! No woman could trust you, no woman could marry you without half the world knowing you’ve had her before the wedding and the other half will suspect it anyway–‘

‘I was a boy then! I didn’t– She–‘

‘She’s Trebond! She’s better than any Duke or Prince or even King, and you’d dirty her, you’d drag her back here where anyone can say anything and she– she–‘

‘Thom,’ Jonathon says from gritted teeth, and shoves him back, and leans down over him, and for a– moment– a horrible awful heady moment, he’s sure Jonathon’s going to– kiss him–

‘I’m not my sister,’ Thom spits.

Jonathon is white-faced but for the fever-bright spots in his cheeks and the blood drying in a streak down his nose. ‘Your precious twin may not want anything to do with me now,’ he says, low and vicious. ‘But I had her every night for a year, and every night these past two months, and when she finally comes to her senses and begs me to take her back–‘

‘I’ll never give my blessing,’ Thom shouts. ‘I’ll see you in the Black God’s arms first.’

Like the plunge into icy water. It’s too far, and he knows it, but he feels alive, and they both know he could do it. _Roger,_ it’s almost on his lips, _he couldn’t but I, I, I–_

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. The bottom drops out of his stomach. ‘Your Highness. I’m sorry. I didn’t– my temper–‘

‘Get up.’ Jonathon licks his pale lips. He stands on clumsy feet, catches the trailing reins of his confused stallion. He holds out a hand to help Thom up, but lets him go as quickly as possible.

‘Highness...’

They don’t speak again for weeks, after that.

 

**

 

When Delia came to him with the idea, Alex laughed her out of his rooms and shut the door in her face. It had been one thing to fall in with Roger’s plans when Roger was alive to make them; it was another to, what, seek revenge? Seek destruction? Alex had never been a plotter, at heart, and he had no patience for convoluted conspiracy, no taste for scheming and hinting and stalking. Roger had kept his loyalty precisely as long as he alive to hold it, but Alex had already been turning away when the Duke’s body fell to the floor, Alan– Alanna’s-- sword buried in his chest.

But neither was he much invested in the time and effort it would take to earn back the trust of men who had once been his friends and companions. Jonathon was leery of anyone who had been close to Roger, and though he never accused, Alex could guess what would be said if it ever did come to words. Why wasn’t there a doll of you in the Veil, Alex? Why didn’t you know? Why didn’t you warn us? Gary made a few overtures, but inertia kept Alex from flattering them into fruition, and Raoul never tried; he spent too much time ducking and blushing from when Alex saw him leaving Delia’s chamber.

Court was more numbing than ever.

Delia never stopped trying to interest him in her grand ideas, her lacquered nails digging into his arm at every clandestine opportunity, hissing in his ear with an urgency he simply couldn’t feel. He took a squire out of the young men– he always got a faint smile at that thought, because now, thanks to _her_ , only the willfully blind would take that sacred institution for granted. The boy was as dull as the last one Alex had had, exactly as he liked. He rode a border patrol at the request of Duke Gareth, who wanted someone battle-blooded to lead a group of green youngsters– so he said. If the Court were relieved to see Alex leave, he was no less so to ride free for a while.

The day he returned, smelling of his horse and nursing a broken finger in his sword hand from a muddy slip in a fight with a peasant who wouldn’t be parted from his goats, he was unamused to be forcibly invited to a late-night party. Jonathon begged him to come, itself a surprise, and Douglass wheedled him with a gift of a bottle of aged scotch, and even Raoul swum up from his shame to say it would be like old times if Alex would only join them. Like old times. He was weak from the deprivation of the patrol– weak from too many lonely nights amongst over-eager children playing at knighthood, weak from too much fresh air in which to brood over things like mistakes and the future; it was almost worth it, seeing their smiles, almost.

But what really made him glad of his attendance was watching Master Lord Thom explode a chandelier when Delia taunted him too tartly.

That made Alex pay attention.

He had barely looked at Thom long enough to get an impression of him, before, but he looked now, suddenly aware that Delia’s far-fetched designs might not be so impossible, after all. Master Lord Thom was everything Alanna wasn’t– haughtily overconfident, conceited, flashy-- fallible.

And he blushed when Alex touched him.

The finger Alex had meant to let heal in the natural way served as an excellent prop. Master Lord Thom was not the least too important to look after a small hurt, no, and might even have been a little smug that Alex asked him and not Duke Baird. If the examination took perhaps a little longer than absolutely necessary, Alex did not interrupt it. Master Lord Thom had soft hands, absent all the familiar calluses of Alex’s palm.

Alex was no practised seductress, but Thom was startlingly unsuspicious of him, so unlike his liar sister that Alex was paranoid for weeks before he finally accepted that Delia had been right all along. It was simplicity itself to play the unsuspecting sorcerer between them, Delia raking his pride and his temper and Alex soothing him with soft whispers and fawning admiration. Roger had been too distracted by his ambition to be half the magician Thom was, if even an untried girl-child could defeat his Sweating Sickness, pierce his illusions, destroy him so easily, and Roger had been acclaimed as one of the mightiest of the age. Why, by that logic, Alanna was the greatest sorcerer of their day, wasn’t she? But Thom would have his own accomplishments, some day, one day–

 _I can do anything she can do!_ Thom would shout, red-faced and hoarse and utterly oblivious to the still smile Alex could feel growing in the darkest core of himself. _I can bring down a fortress with a word, I can boil oceans with a look, warp space and time itself, I can–_

Bring him back.

 

**

 

He must be a very bad brother, because it doesn’t occur to him to wonder what she’ll think of this until he’s walking the low-roofed catacombs toward Roger’s tomb.

He was the first enemy for both of them. Their childhood may not have been happy, but they had neither of them known any fear in it, any deprivation. And though the idea of it had scared him, by the time the decision had been made Thom had never even thought there might be consequences if they were discovered, because he had never imagined that they would be. Alanna was brave and would be a good knight, the best knight, just like she’d always wanted, and Thom was smart and Gifted and would be a fantastic sorcerer like in his favourite tales, the ones with wizards who swept the waters of the sea apart with the gesture of a magic staff. They might even adventure together, one day, Thom a Master of the craft and her a Knight, a champion. No-one would stand against them. Armies would fall to her sword and his rod, and they would be defenders of kings, protectors of law, glorious in all their power.

He still thinks that, really.

Roger’s tomb is white marble, plainer than the royal mausoleums surrounding it, but hardly the pine coffin on Traitor’s Pyre it ought to have been. Thom can pace a full circle around it, if he ducks the ugly carved heads of monsters and weeping saints on the catacomb walls. He _is_ sorry. But the excitement is bigger. _This_ is bigger. He’ll be the only sorcerer, the only _real_ sorcerer to have ever done it, he’ll be a legend, a hero. A demigod. No-one alive or dead can do this, no-one but him. His name will be remembered for all of time.

He’s shaking.

He doesn’t need components, like a lesser mage would. All he needed was the flame.

It’s as simple as the spell Maude had cast, an age ago. His fire is small, quickly consuming the char and tinder. He opens the only packet he’d brought with him: the vervain. The sigh of the brittle leaves is the only sound in the silent limestone halls.

He whispers the same words Maude taught him, and then in the quiet of his mind he speaks more, words that no man or woman has ever spoken aloud. Sorcerers far older had tried and failed to master the forces Thom calls on now; even Si-Cham would hesitate to do this, and even Si-Cham might fail to contain them. The tiny flames turn violet, coloured by his Gift, and then they roar higher than Thom’s head, rushing to blacken the ceiling with their heat and smoke. It burns his face, burns his hands when he thrusts them both into the fire. His essence, the stuff that makes him Thom, streams out through his palms. He is dissolving into the fire; he is the fire.

Something’s there. A room, a dark room... his room? Gold figure like a statue at the door. Running toward him. Copper hair– himself? Weeping. Oh, no... no, he hates it when she cries, he hates it hates it when she cries for him. No, Alanna, don’t cry, I’m sorry– I didn’t mean to–

Love you. Always have. Always will.

Never know how he did it–

The vision clears, but he’s dazed. He never Saw in the fire, never–

'Roger!' He feels the tear of muscle in his throat, the only way he knows for sure he shouted. 'I call on Roger of Conte, I call on the man they called the Sorcerer Duke, and I call him back to life!'

The voice that answers belongs to no man. It is a voice like storm and howl and hunter– huntress– it’s a woman’s voice, and it breaks him.

_My child. My child, what do you do?_

The fire flares with a sound like the exploding chandelier. Power flows back to him like water rushing in to fill a void, and it’s agony, it’s the brilliant diamond edge of fear. He screams, he screams with a deep awful fear like he’s never known before, but he’s deaf to everything but the roar of that horrible voice as the fire consumes his skin, his flesh, his bones. The last thing he sees before he falls into a deep blackness is the lid of the tomb sliding back, and fingers scrabbling for the edge.

_I did it._


End file.
